Dr Millie Horton-Insch

Post-doctoral Research Fellow
2024-26

My research focuses on textiles made in eleventh- and twelfth-century Britain and Ireland, and their relationship to constructions of race and gender in this period. More broadly, I am interested in early medieval histories of art, histories of art around the Norman Conquest, the afterlives of medieval objects, and transhistorical textile studies. I am particularly committed to the application of contemporary art historical theories to art of the medieval past, as a means of presenting an alternative interpretation of extant objects beyond the application of entrenched stylistic taxonomies.

My PhD thesis, on the subject of ‘Textiles, Gender, and Race in Eleventh- and Twelfth-Century Britain’, was an art historical analysis of the small corpus of extant textiles from this period. In this project I sought to demonstrate what this oft-overlooked medium could do for art histories of this period, specifically how they could contribute to broader efforts at reconfiguring those categories that have proved problematic in early medieval studies (namely: Anglo-Saxon).

During my fellowship at Trinity I will be working on two projects. The first will consider how phenomenological theories may inform an understanding of the stylised figural embroideries which were characteristic of early medieval vestments, specifically asking: what does it mean to have abstracted bodies worn on a human body in an early Christian context? This study will be included in the upcoming edited volume: New Directions in the Study of Medieval Art (edited by Amanda Luyster and Matthew Reeve, to be published by Harvey Miller in 2026).

The second project will represent the first art historical study of the images held within the Musée de la Tapisserie de Bayeux that relate to the Nazi’s Ahnenerbe (cultural heritage) project: ‘Operation Bayeux’. This ‘Operation’ charged artists, archaeologists, and art historians with creating photographic and painted facsimiles of the Bayeux Tapestry. These facsimiles were intended to illustrate textbooks which would prove the origins of the Aryan race in pre-modern art objects. In this project I aim to reveal the paradoxes inherent in these reproductions which both attempt faithful accuracy and also seek to use the medieval object as a vehicle for propagandistic interpretations in support of a horrifying cultural campaign. This project therefore engages with urgent questions about the responsibilities of artists and art historians, the limitations of technologies of reproduction in Art History, and the potential for extant objects from the medieval past to be motivated within nationalist politics.

In this fellowship I am supported by a Leverhulme Study Abroad Studentship.

Publications

Horton-Insch, Millie. 2022. “’Ornament’ Reconsidered”, Art History, vol. 45, Issue 4. 912-917.
Horton-Insch, Millie. 2022. “Review of Adrián Maldonado, Crucible of Nations: Scotland from Viking Age to Medieval Kingdom”, Peregrinations: Journal of Medieval Art & Architecture, vol. 8, Issue 3. 129-136.

Conferences and Presentations:

‘Reconfiguring Figural Textiles from the Tenth- to Twelfth-Century’ (July 2025) [forthcoming], International Medieval Congress, University of Leeds
‘Roundtable Discussion: Multifaceted Methods of Textile Research’ (July 2025) [forthcoming], International Medieval Congress, University of Leeds
‘Technologies and the Afterlives of Early Medieval Textiles’ (February 2025) [forthcoming], College Art Association 113th Annual Conference, New York, USA
‘Uses and Misuses of Pre-Modernity: The Nazi Ahnenerbe Project’ (Thursday 4 April 2024), Association of Art History Conference, University of Bristol
‘Entangled ‘Englishness’: Textiles in the Eleventh Century’ (Wednesday 5 July 2023), International Medieval Congress, University of Leeds
‘An Embroidered Environment: Textiles in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries’ (Friday 30 June 2023), International Society for the Study of Early Medieval England Conference, University of Manchester
‘Repeated Modes of Reproduction and the Nazi Ahnenerbe Project’ (Friday 14 April 2023), Bristol Postgraduate Medieval Conference, University of Bristol
‘Weaving Monumental Borders’ (Wednesday 6 July 2022), International Medieval Congress, University of Leeds
‘Establishing a Culture of Textility’ [poster display] (Friday 22 July 2022), Anglo-Norman Battle Conference, University of Bonn
‘Insular Textiles and ‘The Women of the English People’’ (Friday 7 January 2021), Gender and Medieval Studies Conference, The American University of Paris
‘Early Medieval English Embroideries and Reassessing ‘The Winchester School’’ (Thursday 17 June 2021), International Society for the Study of Early Medieval England Conference [virtual]
‘Skeuomorphic Exchange between Embroideries and Wall Paintings in Eleventh- and Twelfth-Century England’ (Thursday 19 November 2020), British Archaeological Association Postgraduate Conference [virtual]
‘Material Exchange between Embroideries and Wall Paintings around the Norman Conquest’ (Thursday 5 November 2020), Cambridge Graduate Early Medieval Seminar, University of Cambridge

Awards and Grants

Study Abroad Studentship, Leverhulme Trust (2023)
Battle Conference on Anglo-Norman Studies Muriel Brown Scholarship (2022)
British Archaeological Association Romanesque Art Conference Scholarship (2022)
British Archaeological Association Travel Grant (2021)
UCL Doctoral School Award for UCL-Yale Exchange (2021)
AHRC LAHP Studentship (2019-2023)

Teaching

I have contributed to a variety of undergraduate teaching programmes, including survey courses and introductions to art historical methods and theories. I have additionally devised museum-based courses introducing students to early medieval art.